


Never Make An AI Jealous

by TwentyoneTwelve



Category: Iron Man (Comic), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: American Sign Language, Artificial Intelligence, Character(s) of Color, Gen, Medical Device, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), bias may ensue, inspired by easter eggs and subsequent research, introducing OC, mute character, my headcannons aren't, some brief medical and surgical discussion, somewhat dysfunctional quasi family relationship, technically compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 12:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8162080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwentyoneTwelve/pseuds/TwentyoneTwelve
Summary: F.R.I.D.A.Y. was not J.A.R.V.I.S.  He could almost forgive the AI’s lack of prescient knowledge regarding the care and feeding of one Anthony Stark. After all she had been a spare, stored on a flash drive in a drawer, and only programmed for interfacing with the suits and the houses. It had taken J.A.R.V.I.S a little while to learn how to be as important to Tony as Pepper or Happy. 
In which Tony Stark has too much free time, discovers he is sort of a father - no DNA test is going to help with this one - and gets caught up in the Avengers activities.





	

Stark could feel the program cycling faster, surging up to the crescendo. The servos whirred, and in the rear-facing portion of his HUD he saw Dummy twitch, fire extinguisher rising as his chemical sensors picked up the slightest trace of overheating bearings. The suit jinked again, and he knew this was the big finale. “Okay… Hit it!”

He expected the workshop lights to strobe, and the guitar riff to spiral out to fill the large room. His legs moved faster, calves burning even with the suit’s support.

What he got was quiet, the same constant illumination from the overhead spots, and the lilting Irish accent of his AI asking “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, what did you want hit?”

“Aww, Friday, you’re killin’ my groove here…” He made to move off the testing platform, but the limbs of the suit, and therefore his legs inside, were still moving rhythmically, the jingle taps he’d attached to the soles of the Mark 47’s feet still punching out their syncopated beat. “Fine. End program. Exit suit.”

He stepped out, made to start the sequence of dance steps in his socks. Arms and legs went in perfect timing for _shuffle, ball change, riff_ and a _slurp_ before he took one jump too wide and half fell off the platform. He saved himself with a hop and a step. It also gave him time to get the lump out of his throat before he spoke to the AI. “Well looks like the muscle memory program is a success. I bet next time I can get it down to less than eighty seven repetitions.”

He paused on instinct, but neither of the expected replies, a snide remark about adding tap dancing to Tony Stark’s many lady-attracting skills, or an ego-piercing reminder that it took better men than him at least 1,000 reps to learn a new skill, came.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. was not J.A.R.V.I.S. He could almost forgive the AI’s lack of prescient knowledge regarding the care and feeding of one Anthony Stark. After all she had been a spare, stored on a flash drive in a drawer, and only programmed for interfacing with the suits and the houses. It had taken J.A.R.V.I.S a little while to learn how to be as important to Tony as Pepper or Happy. Unfortunately by the time he had become, well whatever he had become, he was indispensable. The Vison had been a perfect example of the _Deus ex Machina_ trope, and Tony busied himself pushing tools and paper across his workbench as the singular appropriateness of that phrase burned on his lips with no J.A.R.V.I.S. to share it with. F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s sense of humour algorithms faltered on wordplay.

Maybe he should work on that. Or construct a new AI altogether. After vetoing the farm idea, Pepper had repeatedly suggested a new project. Not that he would have ever admitted it, but Tony had found himself just a touch gun-shy about indulging his flights of genius. He’d thought the move to Florida, designing and building the new house on an island where AIM used to have a secret facility– conveniently located only a few yards from the lab’s back door- would have got his juices flowing again. But apparently not. At least his new place was close enough to Merritt Island to blame late night suit usage on rocket testing.

He schlepped upstairs, went to the bar, eyeing up the selection of variably shaped bottles and coloured liquids. And then he stood for a while, tossing the cocktail shaker from hand to hand. Bored. Bored. Maybe he should make a cocktail. Maybe he should figure out a cocktail that matched The Vision’s Christmassy colour scheme. Nah, that wasn’t it...

“Mr. Stark?” The Worry pitch and waver for F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s vocal template was spot on. “Mr. Stark, you’ve been standing there for twenty four point six minutes. Are you well?”

“Fine, Friday.” He threw the cocktail shaker on the bar and himself on the couch. He’d been on the verge of…something. J.A.R.V.I.S wouldn’t have interrupted. “Just antsy.”

“I could call Ms Potts for you?” He missed Pepper. After all the near-death, and some actual-death experiences, he’d hoped she would agree to retire with him. Instead she was continually in the air, in a meeting, or just inaccessible to one Tony Stark. Maybe he should join all the other retirees, and learn to play bingo. Pretty soon he would turn into a panama short, bucket hat, socks-and-sandals wearing local. Actually…. “Friday, give Rhodey…ah that’s Colonel James Rhodes, a call.”

When Rhodey answered, the window overlay display showed a disturbingly large close-up of his face. Given the way his eyes darted about, he had to be in the War Machine suit, and dealing with a bunch of things on his HUD. “Little busy right now, Tony…” he began, head moving sideways and up as the rest of the suit probably took a sharp dive in that direction.

“On an Avengers gig and you didn’t invite me? I’m hurt.” Tony deadpanned.  
“You retired. I got the impression you didn’t want to play anymore.” Rhodey sounded a little distracted.

Tony didn’t want to be the one to say it. He did not want to admit that the itch rising was one that only wearing the suit into danger was going to scratch. He’d worked so hard to prove Pepper wrong about his adrenaline addiction. She was right about all the others. “Ah… Rhodey, don’t make me beg…”

“Seriously, Tony?” All of a sudden Rhodes had his eyes laser focused on Tony’s face. “Because we could really use a hand right now.”

Pepper was going to kill him. Pepper was going to… He was up and running towards the lab. “I’m maybe half an hour away. Suiting up now. See ya soon.”

 

*****

 

The best part about being the genius who’d encrypted all of the Avengers’ comms gear? Never getting shut out of conversations. It had been thoughtful of Rhodey to include the channel codes in the one screen briefing he’d forwarded, but the day Tony Stark couldn’t enter a conversation of his choosing…well, then he’d either be dead or actually retired.

Nowadays though, he did wait for a pause in the comm traffic before keying his mic. “What’s the plan, Star-Spangled? I’m five minutes out.”

The pause that followed was almost long enough to be classed as awkward. “Nice of you to join us, Stark.” Hard to tell if he was terse out of concentration or still mad about the whole Ultron debacle. Probably the first. Cap didn’t speak passive aggressive. Roger’s next sentence started with a grunt of effort. “Uh. Switch channels to one-four-niner-two, and Damage Control will update that briefing. Then head over to Liberty Island, and take over from Vision.”

“Roger, Cap.” That was both cringe-worthy and never getting old. “Friday.” Saying the AI’s name at the start of the phrase made it an actionable command. “You heard the man.”

The Captain’s voice cut out, to be replaced by a female. “..mage Control to Iron Man?” Contralto with a touch of vibrato if he was any judge. Damage Control would be a good choice to sing the title track of a Bond film.

“Call me Tony, and go ahead.”  
“Confirming you have the briefing package?”  
“Even read it before the dog ate it. I’m on my way to Liberty Island now. And gosh, miss…” The mini-Pepper in his head tried to remind him that antagonising Cap had never been and never would be a good idea, but he barrelled on. “I hope you’re not going to use as many big words.”

The voice in his ear made a sound that might have been a stifled laugh. “Heh. Right then. It’s the Pax. A heavy gas released on both the Liberty Island ferry and in the visitors’ station. Works one of two ways. Makes you sleep, or really amps up your flight response. You’re headed to the island to help corral the runners – stop them taking the outside route in leaving the statue, or swimming back to Manhattan.”

“Sounds do-able.” He twisted to ensure he gave the plane rising from Newark a wide berth. Might have twisted his broadcast back onto all units as well. “Not really an Avengers-type gig though. Thought you all had a new rule about not operating over population centres.” He watched his comm board with amusement, seeing who opened their channel, paused for words or the carrier wave, and then thought better of it. Saw that Cap’s light didn’t even shade towards lit.

Rhodes was the only one who committed to speech. “Real nice, Tony. Retirement did wonders for your sense of tact. NYPD asked us. You remember that whole interagency cooperation we had going after the Battle of New York, right?” He had that _stand down_ tone Tony remembered from the early Iron Man days, when Rhodey had been the Senate Appointed Minder to one loose cannon billionaire inventor. Maybe he was pushing things a bit. Maybe, and especially given how things played out in Sokovia and the whole voluntary retirement which was really an exile thing, he should cool his jets a little. But it was seriously intoxicating having the team’s voices in his ear and real mission information scrolling up the side of his HUD. Okay, wind back the power and max out the responsibility, check. He highlighted Damage Control’s channel again. “Okay, eye in the sky,” She wasn’t tagged as one of the friendly units, so she had to be viewing from a distance. “Just over the island. What now?”

Her voice sparked in his ear immediately. “Change over to Simplex 3. Your friend War Machine is lead out on Liberty Island.”

Rhodes, and his team, which included Sam Wilson – Falcon, and Vision – the synthetic hybrid that was his AI and friend J.A.R.V.I.S and yet was an entirely unique creation, had been busy. They had cleared most of the panicked tourists out of the crown and upper body of the statue. Tony found that their, and now his, current assignment was to keep them corralled in the visitors’ centre and on the terraces at the base of the statue. Vision, with his disproportionate strength and ability to fly in the cramped interior of the statue, was retrieving the victims whose bodies had responded to the gas with a state of deep unconsciousness. Once clear of the copper cage, he brought them down to the pier to be ferried over to the field hospitals being set up in Battery Park.

The state of hyper-alertness and flight reflex didn’t seem to last as long. There were little clusters of people who had returned to their usual frame of mind and were talking it over and trying to make some sort of sense of their behavior. Others, obviously fatigued, were slumped against walls and benches, some even sleeping as they recovered from the adrenaline dump.

Even the few who intermittently tried to break away and had to be herded back to the group were easily managed. Tony assigned F.R.I.D.A.Y to this task with instructions to alert him if there were any she and the suit couldn’t manage on their own and sat back, metaphorically, to think about more interesting things.

For instance, that he really needed to work on F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s vocal module. Well, technically, he needed to overhaul her personality settings. The AI had a tendency to project petulance if he refused to answer calls, and somehow managed to lose messages that people left with her. He had even stood up Pepper when their date night was unexpectedly double-booked. And when he had brought this to F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s attention, in the teasing fashion that J.A.R.V.I.S would have known required apology and careful selection of workshop playlists for a few days, she had seemed a little defensive. And bizarrely, a tad disinterested. So, a rebuild was definitely in order.

He had forgotten just how much of J.A.R.V.I.S.’s personality – the gently firm suggestions for his well being, the confidant, the way his schedule was continually made orderly and organised despite his attempts at rebellion via hedonism – emanated from Tony’s memories of Jarvis. And if the imprint was a touch rose-colored, adult Tony had been more difficult than the real Jarvis had had to deal with. Man and machine had balanced each other well. So really, it was unfair to hold F.R.I.D.A.Y. to the same standard when he couldn’t even remember what – if any – specific traits he had given her. He had put together the best algorithms to manage house and suits and from there thrown her into the heuristic deep end to develop as she would. And if he treated her, and occasionally flirted with her, as if she were the stereotypical secretary, little wonder she had turned out that way. He dumped and changed personality portions as they became irritating, but otherwise, she was as multidimensional as a fridge that ordered its own refills. It was better that way. _Tony beware, of giving your heart to an AI to tear._ He snorted at the misquote.

Well, it was nothing some overwriting couldn’t fix. As for the voice print, well. She often changed it up from the Irish accent to mimic whichever reality star the cleaners had left talking in the background. So another change probably wouldn’t bug her. As if an AI actually got upset.

Well, then, no time like the present. “Friday. Wakey, wakey.”

The suit stopped midway through heading off an attempted escapee. “Yes, Mr Stark?”

“Is the damage control chick talking much?”

There was a pause. “Yes. She is broadcasting on another frequency to the team leaders. And intermittently across several other channels on a separate network. I assume to the civilian resources.”

“Can you record her? Just her?”

An uncharacteristically long pause given her processing speed. “Yes. On-board memory can hold another 2 hours at the current rate. Or I can stream back to the house.” The _why would you want that_ was coming through with multiple question marks.

“Okay. Make it so. Compress and then stream back to the home server. I want best quality audio – tones, inflections and the like.” He hummed softly. He wouldn’t use a direct vocal print. Confusion in the field plus the implied if not intended creep faction were reasons enough. He would keep F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s current quality, and mix in the other’s diction. Okay. Maybe a little bit of that warm resonance. Just enough to make F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s scolding bearable. But really…

“Mr Stark.” Was the AI sounding hesitant or was he just extra sensitive to vocal nuance? “Mr Stark. In order to provide better recordings, what is your intended purpose with the audio files?”

He grinned inside the helmet. “A little present for you, Friday. Thought you might like a bit of a makeover.”

“I see.” Okay, she had definitely developed the ability to project polar blasts. “If that is what you want.”

The suit felt abruptly heavier, enough so that he checked the altimeter in the unlikely event something had failed without the usual sparks and smoke and drama. No… although the brightness of the HUD was turned up so high he had to squint.

“Friday….” He growled. Something similar had happened with the temperature and lighting controls at the house a while back.

Rhodey’s voice – excessively loud¬—made him flinch and swear and blink rapidly at the volume control icon. “..rth to Iron Man.” he was in the midst of repeating when the volume was low enough to take in words rather than a general sensation of eardrum pressure and pain. “You sleeping on the job there, Tony?”

“Friday, I swear…” Tony blinked his way through a series of menus until the suit was back to baselines. “Friday, enter mode Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Twenty-Seven, now.” He had about forty of the WTF protocols hardcoded into each suit. Another result of the whole Ultron situation, at least he would always have verbal controls. Twenty-Seven shut down AI autonomy beyond what was required for mission completion and the protection of the wearer’s life.

There was a bright flash and an emphatic click as several of the icons on the HUD vanished.

Well, if she was going to sulk… “No, Rhodey. I’m here. Just thinking.”

“Uh huh.” Rhodes was clearly in a good mood. “Well, if you’re done, then we’d like you to join us heading back to the mainland. Done and dusted here.”

Another cheerful, although not so familiar, voice joined in. “Hey Stark, does that mean Avengers get a cut if that idea is worth something. Since we inspired it and all.” Had to be Falcon. He’d heard from Nat that the new guy was the glass half full type, and Rogers had always looked brighter after he’d caught up with Wilson. Tony rose on his hand repulsors. Didn’t look at all in the direction of the only member of their team not to say a word the whole time they had been on the Island, despite the yellow-caped figure keeping pace just on the edge of his peripheral vision. “Sorry, Wilson. You couldn’t fill a car with the return from this one.”

“Heh.” Falcon ran several steps, the wings that gave him his moniker extending and beating downwards almost simultaneously, driving him airborne and beside the others. His next words came in stereo, through both the comm system and shouted in Tony’s direction. “Maybe next ti…”

Damage Control cut over him, urgent and concerned. “All units, all units. Converge on Battery Park. Sitrep to follow.” Tony doubted any team leaders had had time to acknowledge the message before she had reopened the channel and was talking rapidly. “Be advised. Sleeping casualties are waking up violent. Most require sedation or multiple Taser shots to subdue. Park triage and med facilities are overrun. Remain in your teams. Captain Rogers will be assigning roles.” She paused, and he could hear anxious voices chattering and phones ringing in the background. “Be safe, but minimal required force. They’re not aggressors, just agitated.”

“You heard the lady.” Rhodes’ jets were already reverse flaring as he dropped over the park. “Rogers wants us stopping anyone getting out onto the roads. Tony, I assume you’ve still got the capability to dial your hand repulsors right down? Just want enough juice to knock them down, not to damage.”

“Pick your shots.” Falcon warned. “We’re not talking soldiers. There’s kids and old folks in the mix. They’ve already got this drug on board, last thing we want is to be doing CPR on a grandma who took a blast to the chest.” His voice trailed off, quieter, resigned. “This is not going to be clean or tidy.”

It wasn’t pretty either. The first thing Tony thought, seeing the general seething, screaming humanity that clotted the paths and roadways of the park, was that someone had picked a bad day for shooting a zombie movie. Then he refocused. Realised that there was no acting, no cameras or make up, just a whole bunch of feral people. It was hard to tell their age or gender. Most were clad in paper overalls, having been passed though the decontamination stations before receiving medical assessment, and all had a crazed, fixed snarl, pupils dilated, hearts beating so fast the pulse could be seen at neck or forehead.

There was no clear direction to their movement, but it was neither a sprint, nor an aimless stagger. Rather they assaulted whatever was in their way -inanimate or living – with a fixed glare and ferocious uncoordinated strength.

On the plus side, there weren’t as many as Tony had feared. Hopefully this was all of them, because if the rest had already been transferred to hospitals across Manhattan, the task was going to get a lot more complicated. “Hey, Friday…check if there’s been any spike in ER admissions in the last couple of hours.”

It took her a while to respond. Long enough for a large man, skin bright red against his white overalls, to come lumbering up. Tony took aim. The repulsor blast lashed out, knocking the man’s feet out from under him. He must have been winded, because it took him a few extra seconds to stand, time enough for a young cop with a Taser to run panting up and shoot him with it. He spasmed, but tried to stand again. A second charge had him lying on the soft grass, groaning and shaking his head, but in no mood to get up.

Tony gave the cop – and he was ridiculously young, with a greenish cast to his ochre skin - a nod and thumbs up and turned away. Over the edge of the rise he saw Cap charge down two young girls, cradling their heads against his shoulders despite their attempts to bite as he took them to ground. The FDNY medic following him jabbed something against the shoulder of one, and then after a juggling of syringes and needles, the other girl. Cap continued to hold on them until they lay still and then threw one over each shoulder, trailing the medic back towards the field hospital.

“No recorded increase in the rate of ER admissions in New York City in the past two hours.” F.R.I.D.A.Y. reported.

“Well that’s something.” The only person between Tony and the park boundary was another, older police officer, and he was turning back towards the interior of the park. Nothing interesting in this patch. “Rhodey… you got anything worth doi…”

“Stark! Behind…”

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

The three things all happened about the same time. He was still hearing both his own voice and Damage Control’s as something loud that set his ears ringing also threw him forward. It felt like the Hulk had tried to pat him on the back, and sounded familiar in a not so great way. He hit the ground, rolled on his back and used the jets to push himself upright. The grey-haired cop was running towards him, hand gun extended, his face drawn back in the same rictus of a snarl as the other casualties.

_Assumptions sure make a hot mess out of you and me_ ,Tony thought, swallowing down the little manic giggle that threatened to turn his next words into a splutter. “I’m okay. Suit caught it all.” _I just got shot!_ How had he managed to get shot with a 360 view and an AI that was vigilantly watching his back? A permanently alert… “Friday! What the hell?”

“Mr Stark?” Oh she knew…the little quiver hiding behind that musical accent.

“Just how did someone manage to shoot me in the back. Someone - and I think this is the telling part – who was galumphing up, no stealth, waving a handgun?”

“I did alert you.” And now suspiciously calm, even for a digital entity. He replayed the HUD view of the event. Yes, there was an oh so tiny red blinking light in the corner of the display, and the man could be seen hurtling towards him in the square that showed his rear view. The one that every single iteration of every AI had been programed to bring forward and highlight in situations like this.

“Not good enough.” He growled, flipping through the damage warnings. Okay. So still operational. Probably not the best idea to attempt suprasonic flight until he’d had it on a work bench and been hands on with the damage. Not ideal, and neither were his options for getting back to Florida. Getting the suit on a commercial flight never ended well, and the conversation with Pepper when she asked why he’d borrowed the jet was unlikely to either. Unless… “Hey Rhodey, you still have my lab set up at your base?”

“Your lab?” James Rhodes had a subtle gift for intonation. “Pretty confident Lang or Wilson have taken possession.”

“They’d better not’ve moved my stuff.”

“Your ‘stuff’ was taking up my space.” Wilson joined in. “Not like I can just molt if the wings get damaged. And we needed somewhere to work on the drones.”

“Didn’t we establish that drones were a bad idea?” The Ultron debacle was probably not the best thing to make jokes about, but if the others were willing…

“Vision keeps on eye on any AIs with delusions of grandeur.” Sam assured him. “And Redwing would never act up. I trained him, after all.”

A soft snicker in Tony’s ear, then, “Just the suit, Stark?” Damage Control did sound slightly concerned. “Do you need a medic?”

“Just the suit,” he confirmed. “Bullet proof. Just not invulnerable.”

“Looks like you’ll be joining me and Cap for the ride home.” Sam sauntered into view, wings folded, goggles up on his forehead. “Seems like it’s under control down here – copy that Damage?”

“Looks that way,” she acknowledged. “Guess you’re headed for the shuttle, Wilson.”

 

*****

 

Good thing the suit was comfortable. They’d had to wait a while in the jet while Rogers finished field debriefs with what seemed to be every emergency service worker, federal agent and reporter in the tri- state area. He’d played Exploding Kittens until he was starting to see repeats in the names of the virtual opponents, and he was halfway towards convincing the medic and pilot to join him and Wilson in a game of Spaceteam – really, what was the problem, they had Starkphones with unlimited data, the game needed four players, and secretly who didn’t want to be yelling “set sigmaclapper to zero, dammit!”? – when finally, Cap loaded himself and the shield. After that the flight was boring and ridiculously short.

The facility had lost its brand new look, the straight lines of the roll out grass and new pathways softened. Oil spots and rubber streaks marred the smooth concrete hanger floor. He followed Falcon out of the jet and through a series of corridors and even one tunnel before they emerged into the glass walled atrium with the catwalk -like mezzanines he had really enjoyed designing.

A near steady diaspora of people in the dark grey tee shirts and fatigue pants that apparently marked the new model S.H.I.E.L.D.’s support staff were streaming from a set of double doors in the far side of the atrium. There was much animated gestures and heads bent over the tablets that each carried. Clearly whatever mission they had been engaged in had gone well. Reminded him of the crew members of the second helicarrier when Fury and Coulson had carried off that impeccable eleventh hour rescue over Sokovia.

A few gawked at him unsubtly but most were engaged in their own activities, moving past him out doors and up staircases. Falcon had made himself comfortable on one of the couches that formed sunlit islands in the otherwise Spartan room, and Tony moved to sit opposite him, unsure what they were waiting for but happy to soak up the late afternoon sunshine. His back was starting to ache. The bullets might not have breached the suit, but they’d hit hard enough to bruise. He passed the time guessing the occupations of the passing support staff. They wore their titles in white screen printing on the back of their shirts, making the awarding of points for correct answers easy. He was on a streak nearing 12 on a row when Wilson stood, moving towards the latest staff to exit, an easy smile on his face.

The two women he approached wore matching uniforms, the same dark grey pants as the rest of the support staff, but paired with pale marl grey shirts. The older woman – tall, with greying auburn hair – wore a headset with a boom microphone lifted away from her mouth and carried the ubiquitous tablet under one arm. She spoke quietly to her companion and turned away, and Tony could see that the back of her shirt read Damage Control.

He made to rise and follow. It would be interesting to hear what her voice sounded like without the electrical interference, and after all the talking they had been doing, introductions seemed in order. But before he got much further than standing, Sam released the other woman from a tight hug and shepherded her in Tony’s direction.

She smiled widely, teeth bright in a dusky heart-shaped face, as Sam waved a hand at Tony. “This is Mr Stark himself. The one tying up your channel with puns and stream of consciousness rants. Tony, this is Elei, although you’d know her better as our Damage Control.”

Elei’s bun – although pulled back tightly up and away from a high square forehead – only rose to the height of Sam’s ear. She wore a wide dark grey choker of some non-reflective fabric, metal and plastic extrusions rising away to sit under her chin and curl around her ear. Her tablet hung from a cross body strap to rest on one hip. She held out a hand. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr Stark. And I’m so sorry, I didn’t warn you about that gunman. Failure on my part. We didn’t realize that the unconscious patients were off-gassing as much as they were. Or that some of the first responders had got so close.”

She did have that same deep voice he had noticed over the air, but if anything it was a little less clear, even a little breathier. Her sentences broke oddly, but maybe, given the way her nose was flattening even more as she screwed her eyes and blushed, it was just nerves. Not every day people got to meet him, and a lot of behind the scenes techies tended to respond the same way. He commanded the suit to retract back from his wrist and extended his hand to grasp hers firmly.

“Pleasure’s mine. Nice to have someone watching the team’s back. Wilson was talking about drones, are you watching from back here?”

“Yes. It’s a really good setup.” He had the sensation that her mouth moved just out of sync with her words. Probably a glitch in the helmet. Or maybe he was getting a concussion. Yeah. That was more like it. Another thing he was going to lay at F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s doorstep when they got back to Florida. “Overlapping drone visuals, as a three -dee table top display. As you put it – quite literally eyes in the skyyyyyy!”

The last word came out as a quiet squeak as the suit recovered his hand, and his arm, not by any means under his control, came up to grab her tightly at the meeting of shoulder and neck. His hand tightened enough that he could almost hear her bones creaking. His face plate slammed down, but not before he heard the whip-CRACK! and caught a whiff of the ozone of his palm EMP generator firing.

The HUD filled up with one of the many faces F.R.I.D.A.Y. liked to appropriate when talking to him, that of a young woman with strong cheekbones, red lipstick and a geometrically structured white-blonde bob. “You like her voice?” It was a triumphant purr. “Well…well…It’s as real as I am!” The AI’s lilt quavered and liquefied. “Why don’t you like me? All I wanted you to do was like me.”

She released control of the suit, and it fell away, not just from the choke hold on Elei, but from around Tony, the helmet crashing to the ground behind him. He almost stepped into it as he staggered back from the real girl in front of him.

Elei held both hands to her throat, smudges of smoke coming from the electronics around her neck, pupils so large the walnut brown of her eyes was barely visible.

Sam stood between the two of them, half bent around the girl, eyes on her, hand to his own face where he was talking urgently into his phone. He shoved the mobile back into a pocket of his fatigue pants, and scooped Elei up. “Stay here, Stark.” The words came over his shoulder since he was already halfway towards the door.

The suit was in bits. Tony eyed them with displeasure before kicking up and catching his helmet. He slid down on the couch, still creased from the suits weight and met his other self’s vacant gaze. “What. The. Hell. Friday.” He muttered. His hands hesitated a little before he slipped it over his head. At least no one was looking.

It was dark inside, the HUD in standby mode. “Hey, Friday.” He said into the quiet. This was really going to restore the Avengers’ faith in him. Tony Stark, epicentre of yet another Artificial Intelligence disaster. Maybe he should just stop building them. “Can’t build better than I am.” Or teach it for that matter. Come to think of it, it was probably a good thing he and Pepper had never gotten beyond the hypothetical in discussing having kids. Imagine how psychologically messed up actual humans would be, given the way Ultron and F.R.I.D.A.Y. had turned out. He missed Jarvis.

“Mr Stark?” She sounded younger than he’d ever recalled her choosing before. “Mr Stark. I should apologize. It was unprofessional. I’ve never been that….”

“Emotional?” He finished. “Not me you need to apologize to, Friday. What brought all that on?”

“You’d never met her, and you wanted me to be more like her.” That made a scary amount of sense. “I know, Pepper’s your favourite girl, I understand that now. But you made me. And then you kept changing me, and then you ignore me. And then you’d only heard her, and you wanted me to have that, when it wasn’t even a real part of her.”

Inside the helmet his eyes widened. “Huh.”

“So I wanted to prove that to you. I didn’t mean that she would be hurt!” If an AI was capable of crying, he would have assumed she was.

He took the helmet off, looked it in the dark eye slots. “So, what do you want to do about?”

 

*****

 

Sam Wilson was waiting for him in the med-wing corridor. His once-over was similar to the ones Rhode had been giving him for years, but the difference was he didn’t know the man well enough to get all of the unspoken messages. He got the general gist though - this was on sufferance. Stark might have been an Avenger even recently, but he wasn’t high on Sam’s trusted list.

Tony held both arms out from his body, showed that all he had was the ridiculously oversize bunch of flowers in one hand and his phone in the other.

Wilson eyed that suspiciously but nodded, opening the door he had been standing outside. He held one hand up to block Tony’s path, and yelled in. “Hey, Timoteo, you ready for your visit from the Tinman?” He must have got some sort of reply, because he nodded and entered, leaving the door open for Tony to follow.

It looked like any of the many private hospital rooms Tony had had the displeasure of spending much time in. Kind of a good sign for Friday’s apology that Elei wasn’t connected to a whole bunch of machines. Instead the young woman was sitting cross legged on the bed, wearing track pants and an olive green shield tee shirt, and gesticulating at the laptop open in front of her. Signing, he realized, when Wilson led him around the side of the bed, pointedly still staying between them, and he saw Barton’s scruffy hair and signature purple tee shirt on the screen. Clint caught sight of them and waved, then signed something to the girl that make her laugh.

At least Tony assumed it was a laugh. Her face made the expected crinkles, but no sound escaped her mouth.

She signed back– a casual goodbye, he thought from the distant memories of Clint attempting to teach him ASL – back and closed the lid on the laptop, reaching instead for the tablet and stylus on the bedside storage unit.

She typed rapidly on the touch screen, then looked up at him, mobile eyebrows raised.

Okay, so he was going to have to start this off… “I’m here on behalf of my AI, Friday.” _Wasn’t that just a sentence out of a sci fi novel_. He held out his phone, grimaced as she recoiled slightly and Falcon tensed. “It’s just a recording. We both assumed you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her.” He tapped the button, and a small three-dimensional image appeared over the phone. It was a girl in her teens, in casual clothes with a structured bob. “Damage Control Officer Elei Timoteo.” The voice from his speakers was still Irish, but probably a decade younger. This was the persona F.R.I.D.A.Y. had wanted, that they had agreed upon during the last week of intense programming. “I want to apologize for my actions, and for any long term damage I did you. Mr Stark has agreed to allow any punishment that you choose, once I have completed what he has set me.

“What did you give her?” Sam asked, aside.

He paused the playback, guessing Elei might be interested as well. “She’s calculating Pi continually for the next month, under supervision by Vison.”

That earned a snort from Wilson and a crooked grin from Elei.

“I would also like to offer my services in assisting to repair the software I destroyed, and the interfacing.” Friday’s image bowed its head. “Again, I am deeply sorry for the harm I caused you. Mr Stark and I have taken action to prevent it happening again.” The video blinked and vanished.

“Some of it was my fault as well.” Tony admitted. “You know what they say about badly behaved kids… So hardware and programming-wise you have my facilities for building and maintenance. Lifetime access. What do you reckon?”

Elei bent over her tablet, her typing speed frantic. Even when she had clearly finished writing, she didn’t look up. Instead a cool voice, not the same one she had had the previous week, but a flat female voice with even intonation and pacing came out of the rear speaker of the tablet. Not the same one she had been carrying the previous week either, he noted abstractly.

“Your suit took my voice.” One hand reached up to her eyes, then as the words continued she began to follow them with the stylus and he noticed that there was emphasis on some words, and pauses between others. “It burnt out my electromyography implants, fried all the modulation software. They had to reopen the tracheotomy because the burns were swelling so much. It took me six months to have a voice again after…. and then it was gone just like that.”

He wanted to apologize again. Almost laughed thinking how rare it was that he had that urge and how it was usually due to this group of people. Choked back the laugh knowing it wouldn’t make any difference.

Her shoulders slumped, and then with a big sigh of air, she squared them, made eye contact for a moment and then started typing. “Okay then.” She was still typing as the tablet began to speak in its default monotony. “This is what I want. We build a system that gets me back in the control room as soon as possible. Then maybe we have time to try things out. I don’t need it shiny and Stark-branded, or able to voice command my car. End goal is that I can go home and talk to my family. And show my grandparents respect with the right tone and pronunciation. I want my birth tongue back. Do we have a deal?”

“You’ve got it.” He reached out to shake on it, saw the microscopic stiffening, gave her a nod instead. “We have a deal, Miss Timoteo.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story grew out of the little Easter egg in Age of Ultron, where Tony uses one of his back up AI's - Friday - to replace J.A.R.V.I.S.   
> So it got me looking into the canonical history of Friday, who turns out to be an interesting character in her own right. ( http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Friday_(Earth-616) )She was made to be Tony's Girl Friday, the indispensable secretary, and usually portrayed herself as a teenage girl who then got a crush on Tony, kidnapped Pepper and was made to do some time in AI jail before being allowed back as her sassy self.   
> Take all that and add some angst. I wanted to see how the loss of J.A.R.V.I.S. affects Tony, how the AI's fit into his family. 
> 
> Elei Timoteo is an original character, who comes from a WIP about what Clint Barton was getting up to just post the fall of Shield. I learned a lot about electrolarynxes and other vocal prosthetics, and what she has is about 20 minutes into the future. I imagine it being a bit like this https://www.behance.net/gallery/11197981/Hands-free-Electrolarynx_Academic-Project-2011   
> Technology is currently at the https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3748802/ stage, neither really discreet or hands free.  
>  Interesting to read about how tonal languages work with these kind of devices. 
> 
> The games Tony plays are both available for Ios, not sure about android, but they looked the most fun (and Stark-like) out of the list I found. 
> 
> Also, as per usual, there's a Wizard of OZ reference. :) 
> 
> I learned a lot of things in the process of writing this, and would love to chat about them with you!   
> Feed back is always appreciated.


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